CII considers setting up National Health Regulator for universal health coverage

With a view to speed up Universal Health Coverage (UHC), the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) is contemplating setting up a National Health Regulator under the Ministry of Health and Clinical Establishment Act.

A report of the CII working groups on health insurance, prepared after significant talks among the stakeholders in the healthcare and insurance sector like ICICI Lombard, IRDA, Johnson and Johnson, KPMG Advisory Services, Oriental Insurance, New India Assurance, IFFCO-TOKIO, Future Generali, Global Hospitals Group and Apollo Munich, was released at the CII Health Insurance Summit. The report underlines that there is need for setting up of a National Health Regulator to speed up Universal Health Coverage. The report also said that it is equally important to set up a Universal Health Care Agency, which will coordinate with all the relevant ministries, departments, health and insurance regulators etc.

Further, the report said that the UHC scheme should mandatorily consist of primary health cover, as secondary cover and a critical care and defines various parameters of each segment.

“The roadmap to UHC implementation is not without challenges - legislative, operational, IT architecture, monitoring mechanism etc. However, clear cut planning has to be done to overcome these issues through healthy dialogue among the stakeholders. The roll out of UHC in a unique Indian model of low cost has many economic benefits. The enormous cost of double burden of disease and dampening impact of an unhealthy population on economic growth is too high to be ignored", the report said.

Source: http://www.insuringindia.com/